133
Montana Becomes First State to Enshrine ‘Right to Compute’ Into Law - Montana Newsroom
(montananewsroom.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2025
133 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
76672 readers
2042 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
EDIT: So after reading the bill, I can see the following problem:
It limits any level of government from restricting the private use of AI tech unless it meets a relatively high bar of legality and specificity. Remember that private use refers to both personal and business use. This means that e.g. a township could NOT decide to ban datacenters due to environmental concerns, water use, etc. They would need to prove a specific datacenter was 'creating common law nuisances' AND that they had exhausted other legal options before they could create any legal restrictions on that specific datacenter (let alone a blanket restriction). The law technically allows for other 'compelling government interests', but fails to list them... meaning it could be challenged in court and would be completely open to a judge's decision. Basically this creates a legal environment where datacenters have a right to operate and any attempt to regulate them would be fraught with the risk of expensive court cases.
Pro-business legislation dressed up as personal rights. Never change, Montana.